


Freefalling

by westandvigilant



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6650104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westandvigilant/pseuds/westandvigilant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Courfeyrac bullies Enjolras into asking Eponine to a dance, where the pair experience and screw up nearly all of the landmark high-school dance moments. nearly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freefalling

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill.

_“You’re going to ask Éponine to the dance,” Courfeyrac stated, stealing a handful of fries from Enjolras’ plate. Enjolras swatted him on the wrist with a sharp and practiced slap. The offending thief squealed, but managed to hold onto a few fries._

_“You are!? How wonderful,” Marius smiled huge, his eyebrows shooting upwards in surprise. “She’s just awesome, you know.”_

_“No, I’m not,” Enjolras replied. “Why would I do that? That’s insane. All we do is argue. It’d be awful.”_

 

_Courfeyrac gave Enjolras the biggest, most dramatic sigh anyone had ever seen. “Then don’t argue with her. She only does it to get a rise out of you. Be nice. Besides, I’m taking the lovely Jehan,” the boy in question blushes quite prettily at the sound of his name, “Turtledove over here,” he flung one of the stolen fries at Marius’ face, “is no doubt taking Ms. Cosette Perfection, and Combeferre will be out of town and I’m not going to spend all night being worried about your lonely ass.”_

_Combeferre squirmed uncomfortably his chair. “It’s not that big of a deal, Courfeyrac. Enjolras probably won’t even go to the dance.”_

_“I leave no man behind, ‘Ferre! He will come to the dance and he will take Éponine, for I will it so!”_

_“No I won’t.”_

—-

“It’s a little late, don’t you think? The dance is in about…” She stops to think and Enjolras can almost hear his blood pressure rising. Why does she make everything so difficult? “..four hours.”

Enjolras moves the phone away from his face and growls at it. Her laugh is audible before he even gets the speaker back to his ear.

“Yes, I know,” he says in clipped, measured tones. “I wasn’t planning on asking you.”

“Wow. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Could you just- What else could you possibly be doing?”

“Wow,” she repeats, drawing out the ‘o’ for much longer than Enjolras feels necessary. “I’m sorry that I don’t have, like, a shop to boycott or a football player to throw pai-”

“Okay okay,” the only thing running through his head is the word recover. “Come on. As Courf has been reminding us so very often, this is the last dance before we all go off to college. Everyone we know is going. And it’s Friday. You should be out having fun. Let me just give you a ride. We don’t even have to talk once we get there.”

Éponine pauses again, the scuffling sounds of feet and muffled voices floating over the phone line. Finally she returns with a hushed: “Okay, fine, you win. Be here at 7. Please don’t be late.” Then she hangs up.

He smiles. Not so much at the victory, but at the word please.

—-

_“She drives me insane. All she does is call me ‘rich boy’ and make fun of my clothes and the Current Events club.”_

_Marius’ mouth screwed into an odd frown, focusing intently on his extra large chocolate shake. “You just don’t understand her.”_

—-

He pulls up the driveway - 5 minutes early - and she’s already walking off the porch. Leave it to Éponine to not even give him the gratification of walking her to the car like a gentleman. It’s only when he opens the door and steps out onto the gravel that he realizes how fast she’s walking.

His mouth hangs open as she walks in front of the car to the passenger’s side, wind picking up her hair as unintelligible yells radiate from inside the house. Their eyes meet for just a moment and his heart fills with an unfamiliar anxiousness before she blinks away, jerking the door open and sinking into the car.

The sounds of dishes breaking rattle the windows of the house and he feels her hand pulling on his belt. He looks down to meet her eyes again, heated amber and fire. His tie feels too tight.

“Can you just drive the car, please?”

—-

_“Seriously, every time she opens her mouth, it’s to make fun of me.”_

_“That means she likes you,” Marius explained around a mouthful of burger. “Éponine isn’t the kind of girl to waste her time talking to people she doesn’t like.”_

_“Oh and how would you knooow!?” Courfeyrac sung out. He leaned over the table to scratch Marius’ chin and received another slap to the wrist for the trouble, only this time it was from Marius._

_“None of your business,” Marius pointed his finger at Courfeyrac in a manner that would have seemed oddly serious, had it not been the hand that held his half demolished cheeseburger._

—-

Éponine runs her hands over the dashboard of his car and makes a sound that might have been vaguely sexual if Enjolras were bothered to notice.

“This is a really nice car.” He’s about to open his mouth to thank her when she continues: “I bet it cost your daddy a few pretty pennies.”

He still says thanks, but he layers it with enough sarcasm to choke a horse. Her only response is to roll her eyes and look out the window. Enjolras moves to turn the music up when she whips around to face him. “You know, if it bothers you so much you could just, like, not drive it.”

“Well, you didn’t seem to mind when we peeled out of your parent’s driveway.”

“I knew,” she yells, bracing one hand on the center console and the other on the passenger seat headrest. “I knew that you would find some way to-”

“Maybe you should jus-”

The bickering continues, bobbing and weaving into new arguments and old feuds. They actually end up arguing about the weather at some point, though neither of them can really remember how or why. It carries on even after they have reached the school, voices raised so loudly that a flock of birds explodes out of nearby tree to escape them.

—-

_Head in hands, fingers trembling with the will to not tear his own hair out, he took a breath. “What would we even talk about? She’s so combative, I don’t even know what to say. Ever.”_

_“Just tell her she looks nice,” Jehan advises. “Everyone likes to hear that.”_

—-

The dress is red and it doesn’t fit her. It’s too large up top and too short in length to actually be one of her own. The straps, thin and gauzy, flutter around her jutting collarbone, causing the top to drape over her chest in an alluring way that Enjolras almost notices, just barely, before realizing she’s wearing Chucks.

She’s walking next to him wearing a red dress and black, ratty Chucks.

Which is cool. Really fucking cool.

“You look really nice,” he says. And he means it, quite to his own disbelief. Not that she ever looks bad or at least he thinks so or maybe he just doesn’t pay enough attention.

“Yeah and you look like an evil lawyer.”

Enjolras grits his teeth and marvels at the fact that he’s found the only person in the world who can turn everything into an insult.

—-

_“Listen,” Enjolras said. “School events are boring.”_

_“Which is a good reason not to go,” Combeferre reasoned, forever coming to Enjolras’ aide._

_“Éponine thinks so, too,” Marius laughed. “So at least you’ll have that in common.”_

_Courfeyrac wiggled his eyebrows and slung an arm around Jehan. “Yes, they suck. That why it’s up to us to make the fun.”_

_Enjolras decided to hide his head in his hands once more to make the sound of Courfeyrac’s irritating jovial voice go away, but it was Jehan’s soft tones that slipped through his defenses._

_“You could always dance with her. That’s nice.”_

_“I don’t like dancing,” he groaned. “I hate dancing.”_

_“Maybe you just haven’t found a reason to like it yet.”_

—-

She looks so content, sitting next to him, bobbing along to the music that he has a nearly irrepressible need to touch her, feel her in some way. The fabric of her dress looks like it would be cool and silky against his fingers.

And it’s red. It outlines her narrow curves in screaming scarlet, demanding attention and lapping it up greedily. Just as demanding as Éponine herself.

“What?” She asks. He blinks a few times as he realizes that his drink has begun to condensate in the time he’s spent memorizing the arch of her eyebrows.

“Wanna dance?” He mumbles, unable to think of anything else to say.

“With you? Yeah right. You’ll probably waltz me around the room, won’t you, rich boy? Well, I don’t know how to waltz and I will not have you makin’ me look a fool here.”

“Why would you just assume that I know how to waltz? Or that I would even want to? Jesus Christ, what is your problem? If you find me so annoying you didn’t have to come, you know.”

That shuts her up. They sit in silence for the entirety of the next three songs, which is a hell of a lot longer than one would think. 

—-

_“How am I supposed to make a school dance fun? They are pits of despair that no man should be subjected to, let alone hormone addled teenagers like us.”_

_Courfeyrac laughed again and told him to “turn it into an adventure she will never forget.”_

—-

“Wait, how do you know about this.” Pebbles tumble off the roof and onto the ground as she takes her feet right to the edge. Music from the dance wafts over the rooftop while the wind grabs her dress and makes it ripple around her legs. A smile ghosts across her lips, highlighted by the headlights passing below.

“You remember when some of the guys and I threw red paint on the football team’s first string offensive line-up for threatening Jehan?”

Realization floods over her features and she laughs. “Of course that’s how you knew the way up here.” She takes a deep breath of the night air and Enjolras can’t help but notice how free she looks. “That was pretty cool. Can’t believe you didn’t get expelled though.”

“Yeah, well they deserved it.”

“Oh no doubt.” They stand in silence for another moment, the breeze washing over their faces and leaving pleased smiles in it’s wake. 

“Still probably cost your parents a pretty penny, huh?”

And for once, there is no venom in her voice. Or at least, he wants to thinks so.

“Probably,” he agrees.

He feels as though he should brace for impact. Brace for a barb. A lash. But she smiles at him, a wide smile that softens her angles, and it looks like the light at the end of a tunnel he didn’t even know he was lost in. 

—-

_“Whatever you do, just don’t pitch a tent,” Courfeyrac teased, grabbing Enjolras by the shoulder and shaking him._

_He dug his elbow into Courfeyrac’s armpit as Marius and Jehan screeched “pitch a tent!?” in unison. Courfeyrac crumbled to the ground with a pained grunt that turned into a full blown laugh. Combeferre threw an apologetic look to the waitress who stood tapping her foot at a few feet away._

_“Look, I’m just saying,” Courfeyrac explained as he crawled back into his chair. “You spend about zero time around people you are interested in, you know, in a romantic sense, and you’re going to end up in close proximity with, like, a super pretty girl. You’re body is going to be like ‘what the fuck’ and then refuse to behave. Mark my words, oh marble man.”_

—-

They dangle their feet over the edge of roof and pretend they aren’t scared to fall, the wind turning his now-loosened tie into a red streak across the air. The asphalt of the roof pinches through the the thin material of his slacks, prickling his skin and making it easy to focus on anything other than Éponine being seated beside him. Éponine with her slinky dress and her bronzed skin and her thick eyelashes and her long, bare legs and her lips…

“Are you okay over there?”

Her husky voice makes him realize how hard he had been staring at her mouth and- goddamn it. He crosses his legs and swears every curse he knows against Courfeyrac.

—-

_Finally, Enjolras broke. They could talk about dancing and attempt to chide him into whatever they’d like, but they could not should not would not be allowed to talk about his penis and it’s habits._

_“Goddamnit! I’m not going to that stupid dance with that stupid girl that lives her life to make fun of me!”_

_Everyone looked around in an amazed silence. Eventually Combeferre asked, as tentatively as possible while still being audible, why exactly Enjolras cared so much about what Éponine thought of him._

_“I don’t,” he answered with downcast eyes. “I don’t care what she thinks at all.” If only he would have looked up and seen the knowing glances being passed around the table, he might have saved himself some time._

_“Well, then can you do it for us?” Courfeyrac begs. “Please? Come to the last dance of your high school career for us.”_

—-

Now they lay on their backs, pretending they can see stars through the haze of city lights.

“You know.” Sleep laces his voice as he speaks. “It’s funny that Courfeyrac made such a big deal about me coming to this dance considering that we barely even saw any of them.” He waits for her answer and when it doesn’t come, he sits up to find that Éponine has rolled over to her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows, lips parted and eyes wide. “You okay?”

“Listen.” She licks her lips. “I know that you don’t like me and I get that because I know that I’m a handful. I can be terrible when I want attention, but all… Can- Can you kiss me? Please? Then I’ll leave you alone, I swear just-”

He places a soft kiss on her lips and she returns in kind, their kiss gentle in a way that their words had never been. It’s sweet and it’s short and restrained; a kind of kiss that quietly promises that there will be more to come, but that now is not the time.

The music from the dance crescendoes, with Tom Petty warbling about free falling. Enjolras shoots to his feet and extends a hand to Éponine.

“Would you care to dance?” But for once, she doesn’t look like she’s bursting to the seems with words. So - for once - he makes it easier for her. “Come on, I’ll teach you how to waltz.”

—-

_“Just make some memories, man. Make some good ones.”_


End file.
